Foreword by Dr Lim Teck GheeAlthough more than 30 years have elapsed since the establishment of the National Culture Policy (NCP) in the early 1970s, the oppressive aspects of the policy have continued to exert a dominant influence over the way in which arts and culture policy is implemented in the country.
The failure to revise this contentious approach has had adverse impacts and repercussions along a wide front – ranging from the sapping of intellectual vitality in the universities and official media to the homogenization (and therefore pauperization) of the indigenous and other Malaysian art, music, cultural and even religious forms, practices and activities.
Fortunately, there has always been a small group of brave individuals and organizations that have refused to be stifled by the NCP, the plethora of legal and administrative procedures and processes infringing on or seeking to circumscribe freedom of expression, and the self-appointed guardians of official morality that seek to derail the right to artistic expression as provided for in the Constitution.
The present development that we see in arts and culture is still a fragile growth that requires nurturing on many fronts. It needs support from all quarters especially in ensuring that the alternatives to the officially approved arts and culture be kept vibrant and alive.
Readers are aware that it is not the CPI practice to carry advertisements for any commercial body. We have made exceptions in a few rare cases where we feel the posting needs to be drawn to the attention of the public on account of its social merit.
We are glad to have the opportunity to feature this coming event organized by the Instant Cafe Theatre Company in our website. The ICT’s objective as set out below is one that can only help enrich our arts and culture.
Our long-term aim for our Cafe House of Art and Ideas is to help create an alternative version of the traditional cultural “institution??? and to experiment with ways to integrate culture into the lives of cities and neighbourhoods.
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Sex, Violence & Religion in Pre-Independence Malay Movies
Amir Muhammad is the only person you know who has seen every single surviving Malay movie made before 1957.
This is for his upcoming book 120 MALAY MOVIES that actually looks at a longer period (1948-72) and will be launched in April.
He takes us through the earlier ones by showing how the world depicted in them might be different from our own.
Day/Date: Saturday, 28th November 2009
Time: 5pm
Venue: CHAI – No. 6, Jalan 6/3, 46000 Petaling Jaya (off Jalan Templer)
Entry by Donation
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Jailhouse Rave: Sex, Drugs and Artistic Factionalism in Nineties KL
with Yee I-Lann, Nani Khahar, Bernice Chauly, Kean Wong and many others
moderated by ARTERI
Date: Saturday, 28th Nov 2009
Time: 8.30 PM
Venue: CHAI
Malaysia in the 1990s was a different country. A demographic shift occurred in this decade, resulting for the first time in our country an urban majority population. KL, too, was in many ways a different city. A changing city. A city flushed with a new found wealth from the economic boom. The sky was the limit and Malaysia Boleh as a catch phrase, declaimed without irony, encapsulated the brazen confidence, married to a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption.
Within this giddy parade of endless possibilities, an urban youth culture found its beginnings. Treating the city as its playground, it explored strategies to subvert and re-imagine the city in creative ways. Sex, drugs, art happenings, site specific engagement, and rave music flooded our local scene, injecting a different idea of culture antithetical to the pretensions of the nouveau riche, which culminated in the 1997 Pudu Jail art/rave party – Blue Skies.
Blue Skies however came at the end of this nationalistic burst of optimism. An event that eventually divided the KL art community over the moral implications of its site specific engagement, it also signifies the end of era, followed shortly by the financial and political crisis that has since changed the way we think and talk about Malaysia.
Join us for an engaging evening of discussion and reminiscence with some of the key players in this momentous period of our city’s history. Using the Pudu rave party – Blue Skies – as an entry point, we invite both the organisers of Blue Skies and the protesters to come together publicly for the first time in ten years to reassess the significance of creative engagement within an urban context and its future.
ABOUT instant
CAFE’s HOUSE of ART and IDEAS CHAI is a space for artists to create, meet, discuss, and engage with each other as well as the wider public. Our long-term aim for our Cafe House of Art and Ideas is to help create an alternative version of the traditional cultural “institution??? and to experiment with ways to integrate culture into the lives of cities and neighbourhoods. Come for the work. Stay for CHAI and Conversation.
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